"Thrillers are, at root, escapist and consolatory ... There is nothing wrong with being entertained by that from time to time, just as there is nothing wrong in reading about overcoming obstacles to find your great dark man in novels of romance. But there is something overdone about the extent of the thriller's grasp on us," he writes in the Telegraph. "The best thrillers are rattling good yarns in ways which Middlemarch or Buddenbrooks never aspire to be. We turn away from the unspeakable, inexplicable horrors of the newspapers, events with no resolution, into a world where a single running policeman can put everything right. You would have to be a dull reader not to enjoy that sometimes. But never to want something better, deeper, less resolved, you would have to be a moron."

Although I am a fully paid up thrillerreader, I do tend to agree with Hensher that "the liveliness and extravagance of current genre-writing in fantasy and science fiction, such as China Miéville's remarkable novels, make the field a much more plausible candidate for literary exaltation than the rule-bound thriller". I will certainly be campaigning for Embassytown in the Not the Booker prize.

But I'm amused to see, buried in his argument, Hensher's dig at the Booker judges's selections ("Perhaps one shouldn't be surprised, since four of the five judges have themselves written thrillers in an amateur capacity – some quite good, some, such as Dame Stella Rimington's faltering efforts, atrociously bad") – and to note the Literary Saloon's sly reminder that "no doubt there's no connection whatsoever, but I hasten to remind you that Hensher's own King of the Badgers ... was not Man Booker-longlisted this year, despite the fact that as a previously shortlisted author his publisher could have submitted the title without it counting against their two-submission limit."